Posted on 01/22/2002 2:36:58 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2002 12:08 a.m. EST
Ashcroft Faces Quandary Over Clinton Scandal Secrets
Sometime in the next three months Attorney General John Ashcroft is expected to decide whether to make public still-secret evidence in an array of Clinton-Gore scandals, including Whitewater, Filegate, Chinagate and the Monica Lewinsky imbroglio.
The evidence comes in the form of nearly 2 million recovered e-mails that Justice Department lawyers will review with attorneys for the former president and vice president.
In a Jan. 9 filing with U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth, the Bush Justice Department revealed that Corbett Technologies of Alexandria, Va., had completed the process known as the "Tape Restoration Project."
"From 189 failed [e-mail] tapes, 53,149 unique e-mails were restored and added to the TRP. In total, the number of unique TRP e-mails is 1,844,242," the DOJ said.
Nearly half the 189 tapes, 71, were blank.
"White House whistle-blowers who have talked to people who have seen this e-mail believe it contains incriminating evidence," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told NewsMax.com Monday.
The e-mails cover critical periods in the late 1990s and were under subpoena by Congress and the independent counsel. Sources familiar with their contents have described them as potentially very damaging.
Judicial Watch first revealed the White House e-mail scandal in 1999, when then-Clinton administration computer expert Sheryl Hall told the legal watchdog group that critical e-mail evidence was being withheld.
After Hall's revelation, another White House computer expert testified he was told to keep quiet or there would be "a jail cell with your name on it."
The restored electronic files also cover illicit Commerce Department trade missions in which tickets allegedly were sold to corporate donors to the Democratic National Committee, and may even contain evidence on Enrongate.
One odd coincidence: Attorney Earl Silbert, who now represents Enron CEO Ken Lay, also represented Clinton Chinagate kingpin James Riady as well as Northrop-Grumman, one of the independent contractors hired by the Clinton White House to help with e-mail retrieval.
"Now the question is will the Department of Justice under Ashcroft divulge what they find?" Fitton said.
A recent Bush executive order shielding materials of past administrations from discovery could be invoked in this case, he warned.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Bush Administration
Clinton Scandals
Their failure to do so is caused, not by being blackmailed or coerced because of something in their 'file' but by more basic flaws. We make it way too easy on them when we explain their failings by pointing to the files.
As I said, The FBI files excuse is a worn and weak explanation for deeper failings by various people.
Will not happen. Clintons and Bushes connected at the hips.
:(
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